Archive

I am directionless. In every sense of the term. Medically, there must be a term for it. Romantically undiscovered, that’ll add to my admirable list of illnesses now or posthumously. I don’t know roads. Perhaps it doesn’t register in my brain. It’s amazing really, the same roads, landmarks and buildings I pass every day, in a city that has cradled me since birth, and yet, I am lost the moment I step out. The regular roads, the way to my office, to the local grocery and so on I have forcibly memorized, and I look frantically around to make sure I’m not losing my way. I’m never at ease when I have to go somewhere, because there is an address, there’s a direction and I don’t know it. Addresses, roadmaps are always useless. I kindly nod and take visiting cards and dispose them because they aren’t any use. So how do I go around? By asking people. I’ve been all over just by asking people where the road leads. And I get quizzical stares all along the way – “Heck you, didn’t you ask me the same road yesterday?” Yes, I say. They stare at me and take me to be a goner, a Kepplerian, eccentric or retarded. But they tell me anyway. I can’t cross roads either. I’ve been saved, abused and pulled back from accidents forever. When adolescence was hovering around the corner, ravishing diva told me, “You better look after your appearence, you need someone to pull you back from accidents forever!”

So what would you choose – Truth or Death?

You’re in this war you have created. Maybe, merely by paying the taxes for weapons all your life. And now your husband is carried away. And now your daughter is raped. And now you’re told to comply to a political lie. You’re told that this dishonesty is organized, much like the organized crime going on all around. Your husband has been carried away to a remote camp and he is dead. See, he’s not going to come back. But you, you have to survive. Your beauty is only young and a baby nestles in your lap. Say it. Say the lie. Conscience is just your mind. It’s yours. You can do what you will with it. The country owes you nothing. You are singular, what’ll you do with that plaque on your grave, the plaque of a patriot, when you’re a mutilated something in a mass of mass graves somewhere?

You choose the truth.

You choose to say what you’ve seen. You can have recipes to choose from. A patriot who will die with head held high. Or the stark matter-of-factness. A soldier, you can’t let the devil get to you. A soldier, your heart is your country’s first, that wedding ring came later. You will live and see to the end. Don’t fear anything. Death is the worst that can happen to you. It’s only the wait that’s your death. The death is your release. You will have no memory. Your mother, your family, they will carry on. You will live for truth. You will die for truth.

And yet I have seen you stagger back from the sight of the mass graves. Lose your sight at the thought of having to join them in seconds. Piss your pants the moment before the gun sticks to your head. I have seen you trying to remember a prayer… —–

It’s good to see we choose SOMETHING. A decision saves us all the time. A decision makes it all really simple, structured, organized. Organization is what we’re made of. From the moment the sperm meets that egg to when the religions bury or burn you, you need to stand by your decision. Of course it is the plaque you wear smothering your indecision and killing that conscience.

And it’ll be intensely funny, one day to think on your dying bed, of the moment you executed the rival somebody for your country. He must’ve felt just like you’re feeling now. He must’ve hated dying.